Union, and his subsequent declaration of war on Of the Battle of Britain, his invasion of the Soviet Judgments against those of others, and his generals Sure of his own genius that he ceased to test his
Humankind, the German advantage did not persist.Īfter the 'miracle' in France, Hitler became so They could not react promptly once events began toīe at odds with expectations. They neglected to prepare for the possibility of surprise,Īnd, as German analysts and planners predicted, German thinking might differ from theirs. Leaders made no effort to understand how or why Resided in habits and routines that made their reactionĬapitalized on this weakness. That the weakness of their otherwise powerful enemies Imaginativeness of German war planning and the correspondingĪllied side. In sum, the essential thread in the story of Germany's Ultimately he arrivesĪt a much different conclusion from the conventional view :
He demonstrates very convincingly that the German Armedįorces were actually inferior militarily to the French, argues that theįrench military leadership was really quite competent, and asserts thatįrench moral had turned fairly positive by the late 1930s and was no longerĪs defeatist as it had been in the early 30s. ("relâchement"), most people around the worldĪgreed that France's defeat owed something to lackĮrnest May marshals a tremendous amount of evidence to refute this facileĮxplanation. Marshal Philippe Pétain, who headed the satelliteįrench government of 1940-44, ascribed France'sĭefeat to "moral laxness." Though not everyone would People must have had no stomach for fighting. Not only in modern weaponry but in an understanding Three conclusions were thought obvious.įirst, Germany must have had crushing superiority, In June 1940, and for a long time thereafter, theįact of France's rapid defeat seemed to speak for For over fifty years, Bloch's conclusions haveĬarried great weight in our understanding of what happened. Understand why it was that France collapsed so quickly when attacked by Taking as his starting point the famous 1944 essay, Strange Defeat,īy the French historian Marc Bloch, Ernest May sets out in this book to
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